UPDATE: Sanford Sports Complex upgrades include a baseball stadium and housing

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UPDATE: The city council accepted a withdrawal of renewal alcohol licensing for Lucky Lady Casino tonight. I will have to commend the city council and administration for keeping the pressure on and thank the business owner for having the courage to withdraw instead of fighting this. The council may take more licenses away in the coming weeks at that strip mall.

There was a private meeting with the mayor and some city councilors (only 4 can attend due to quorum) with the property owner recently, but I never heard at the meeting tonight what happened at this closed door meeting. Once again some on the council and the mayor think the best way to negotiate these very PUBLIC problems are in DARKNESS.

This reminds me of when the city council bailed on implementing stronger noise ordinances DTSF and enforcement because a group of DTSF business owners took upon themselves to try to solve the problem through closed meetings between themselves. The council failed to act. Nothing will get solved when you try to fix PUBLIC problems in the DARK.

Just another reason we don’t need a stadium in DTSF. This of course has been NO secret. The Sanford folks have floated an indoor pool and a baseball stadium in the past.

I wonder what the Riverline District folks think of the proposal? Would have loved to see the hand wringing . . .

HERITAGE PARK GETS A CLEANUP?

A concerned citizen pointed out to me today that suddenly Heritage Park (on 6th and Weber) is suddenly void of transients. This all seemed to fall in line with the opening of a new consolidated ad agency next to the park.

Things that make you go hmmmmm?

WILL THE CITY COUNCIL GROW A . . .

At Tuesday night’s meeting the city council will be re-visiting the Lucky Lady alcohol license. As I understand it the vote may be split and there has been some back door wrangling going on. What I find ironic is that the administration and the council have had three years since they were denied a purchase agreement to fix up this area and have done NOTHING!

This isn’t a time to hold hands and say grace, this is a time to get out the pink slips and send these folks packing!

City of Sioux Falls pushing for MORE indoor pools

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Weren’t we told the MAC would do gang busters because there was such a need? The need has been SO great attendance goes down each year and subsidies go up ($700K a year approx.) If the MAC was at capacity and was being used that much, wouldn’t it at LEAST be breaking even?

Designs for both Frank Olson and Kuehn Park pools included both an indoor and outdoor option, and an indoor pool would also likely mean more indoor recreation like a running track, gymnasium space and multi-purpose rooms.

We don’t need another municipal indoor pool OR rec center. We should encourage Sanford to build a large facility at the Sports Complex and get out of the broken window and broken sidewalk fixing business and money losing adventure the MAC has been.

The disappearing Sioux Falls Planning Commission Agenda

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Now you see me, now you don’t

On Thursday night I happened to take a gander at the agenda page, I was surprised to see the March 2 agenda for the Planning Commission posted. I didn’t make a copy of it because normally if an agenda is posted it usually doesn’t come down even if changed before the 24 deadline. I did read it though, and NO surprise that everything was in the consent agenda with a stamp of approval from planning staff.

What I find interesting about the disappearing agenda is that it did have one item on it that would be of interest. There was a rezone request for offices at the Sanford Sports Complex (The DSU project). Why is this interesting? No public funding has been approved yet by the city. Was the agenda pulled because of this? What other changes were made? By law they don’t have to post an agenda until 24 hours before a meeting and it must be the final agenda. In other words if they would have kept up the agenda from Thursday, they could have updated that agenda any time between then and Tuesday before the 24 hour deadline. The city council has done this on occasion. But to take it down completely to make the updates is very curious.

I tried to find something in the charter that would address posting an agenda then taking it down completely without replacing it with an updated agenda, but I could not. Maybe this is something that needs to be addressed at the meeting Wednesday night?

Is Noem doing Sanford’s Bidding?

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Yeah, sadly we have to go to Yahoo News to get the real bizzo on our Governor. As I have mentioned before, we would never get a story like this out of our local media;

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is encountering heightened scrutiny over decision to reject women’s sports legislation, with many questioning the influence of a longtime advisor – Matt McCaulley – who also has ties to the state’s top employer.

You may remember Mr. McCaulley, he was Sioux Falls City Councilor Neitzert’s attorney when he gleefully avoided punishment over his ethically challenged trip to Texas with Mayor Poops.

Since Noem’s veto, her conservative credentials have come under scrutiny, including from National Review. The conservative outlet published an article last week that raised legislators’ concerns with McCaulley and highlighted the $40 million that his client, Sanford Health, directed towards its sports complex on the same day that Noem announced her veto.

Kwinky Dink? I think not.

“It’s a well-known secret in South Dakota that Matt McCaulley has a seat at the Governor’s policy table while simultaneously representing the interests of Sanford Health as one of their key lobbyists,” a person with first-hand knowledge told Fox News.

“During the Women’s Sports debate, we clearly saw this conflict of interest when the Governor came out with a style-and-form veto on the same day that Sanford Health announced their $40M donation to expand a sports complex. McCaulley not only influenced Governor Noem’s decision to derail the women’s sports bill, but he also helped write the press release and worked on the messaging.”

Hey, Kristi, you could have waited at least a couple of days . . .

Some have suggested that Noem’s policy decisions were made under heavy influence of McCaulley.

And a lot of other people. It is pretty plain to see that Noem is influenced in every thing she does by outside influence. Whether that is McCaulley, Lewandowski, Trump . . . the loser list goes on and on.

Sioux Falls needs to stop putting our philanthropic eggs in one basket

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As we have heard since Friday, there are many more chapters to be written about the investigation into Denny Sanford. At this point, we really don’t know what will happen. But one thing is clear, and something I have been concerned about for a very long time, depending on one big donor in our community to sponsor almost everything has put us in quite the pickle. We need to spread it around more.

Let’s face it, even if this wasn’t currently going on, we have already sold our souls to one person. Drive around this town, how many things have Denny’s name written all over it? Even if Denny would have made his money curing Cancer, would it still make it right? I have often argued we need to spread the philanthropy around. Recently we saw that with the Triage Center and the Kirby Dog Park. To that, I say bravo.

Even if Denny gets out of this unscathed, we can’t go back. It will cost the hospital and the taxpayers of this community millions to erase his name from our town. It will have economic impacts, political impacts, reputation and business impacts, city budget repercussions and many more things if he is indicted. We must prepare NOW for things to come.

In this letter from CEO of Sanford Health, something stuck out to me;

Like you, I’m deeply concerned about these reports.

Yah think Kelby!? This tells me that those on the top probably know how deep this investigation goes. To put out a letter like this before any indictments should all make us step back and think a little bit.

I knew there was going to come a day of reckoning in our community because we put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to charitable giving. Hopefully we learn from this, because it will end up costing us a lot of dough.

And if the sign on the Denty needs to be removed, may I suggest a name I had from the beginning, The Citizen’s Center, why not name it after the folks who are paying the mortgage on this dented up tin can?